Books about “the birds and the bees”

The New Yorker has printed a funny article by called “Too Much Information” by Jill LePore in which among other things, it mentioned these selections…

” Maybe you had one of these books when you were young. The big hits in the seventies were “ ‘Where Did I Come From?’: The Facts of Life Without Any Nonsense and with Illustrations” (1973) and “ ‘What’s Happening to Me?’: The Answers to Some of the World’s Most Embarrassing Questions” (1975), both of which were written by Peter Mayle, who went on to write “A Year in Provence.” If you put your mother and your father in a bathtub, Mayle suggested, you’d notice that they’re different. “You’ve probably noticed that already, but you notice it much more when you put them in the bath together.” “Vagina” rhymes with “Carolina,” Mayle explained, and an orgasm is like a sneeze. Gesundheit. You can see Mayle’s influence in the way the authors of these books try to be funny—deadpan and wide-eyed—but when they’re awful—phony, mainly, and joyless—there’s almost nothing worse, because if you’re nine and you’re reading a book with the word “uterus” in it, really, it’s bad enough already.

The best of the latest batch have an endearing and companionable matter-of-factness. “Pads are also called sanitary napkins,” Robie H. Harris explains in “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” for ages ten and up, and then she has the good sense to add, “Sanitary means clean.” Harris doesn’t have Mayle’s ear for the ridiculous, but at least she’s not hammy. Her books, which include “It’s So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families,” for ages seven and up, are genuinely sweet, in a genre in which there’s a fairly despicable tendency to be edgy, brash, and cool, as if what kids can put out must be what they need from grownups. She’s got a section called “What’s Love?,” and sensible, even existential, answers (“Sometimes people just love each other”), along with a remarkably thoughtful discussion about love between men and men and between women and women. Harris’s books also boast by far the best illustrations, honest and tender drawings by Michael Emberley.” Read more here